Topdog/Underdog

Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 2001

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Scene Summaries & Analyses

Scenes 1-3

Scenes 4-6

Character Analysis

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Character Analysis

Booth

A black man in his early thirties, Booth is the younger of two brothers and the perpetual underdog. He is intensely jealous of his brother, Lincoln, and views his brother as an obstacle to his vision of success. As a kid, Booth tried hard to emulate Lincoln by joining in the hustle of Lincoln’s successful but illegal three-card monte game but was mostly a hindrance, earning a reputation among Lincoln’s crew as a liability. Now that Booth is an adult and Lincoln no longer throws cards, Booth sees an opportunity to take Lincoln’s place. But still, he isn’t nearly as talented as his brother. Booth embodies the pent-up frustration and aggression that arises from an inability to progress and advance. He has his own illegal talent, but unlike three-card monte, his shoplifting is done secretly and does not provide an opportunity to perform masculinity for an audience. Therefore, Booth forcefully expresses his masculinity in other ways. He is sexually aggressive and violent, carrying a gun on his body at all times.

Booth treats any type of disempowerment or rejection as emasculation, and he desperately fights emasculation. His girlfriend, Grace, rejects and humiliates him, and he responds by killing her. Booth’s competitive attitude toward his brother echoes the sibling rivalry of John Wilkes Booth, who was not nearly as successful an actor as his much more famous brother, Edwin Booth. The historical Booth brothers had a falling out over Booth’s anti-Lincoln stance (since Edwin Booth favored the Union), and their disagreement contributed to Booth’s motives in Lincoln’s assassination. Similarly, Parks’s Booth allows his anger at his brother to feed into his insecurities and frustrations and finally expresses those feelings through violence. Booth tries very hard to assert dominance and masculinity and sees Lincoln’s dominance as dormant as he works a job that allows customers to subjugate and humiliate him over and over. But when Lincoln loses that job and falls easily back into hustling, Booth kills him in order to seize power.

Lincoln

Lincoln fell into the role of patriarch in his father’s absence because he was 16 and his brother, Booth, was 11 when their father left them. Lincoln’s place as the top dog in the family comes naturally and cannot be impeached when he takes the job as a Lincoln impersonator rather than displaying his masculinity in the street or through his alleged sexual inadequacy. Lincoln has lost his wife, he spent his “inheritance,” and his job forces him to sit still while others act out their own aggressions on him. He has been reduced to sleeping on a chair in his brother’s apartment. But as Lincoln asserts, “They say clothes make the man. All day long I wear that getup. But that dont make me who I am” (33). Circumstances are only clothing. Underneath, the brothers are both the same people they always were. While Booth received his inheritance from their mother, Lincoln received his from their father. By spending the money, Lincoln shows that he is a man of action rather than caution or fear. Their father even included Lincoln in his extramarital sexual exploits, allowing Lincoln to watch him have sex. Lincoln even frequently had sex with one of his father’s women, poised as the heir to the role as the father figure.

Lincoln attempts constantly to mitigate his brother’s aggression by giving in rather than fighting. Unlike Booth, his identity isn’t tied into expressions of aggressive dominance. This also suggests that Lincoln has been selflessly taking care of his younger brother, sacrificing for his well-being. Even when Booth rapes Lincoln’s wife, Cookie, Lincoln does not reject his brother but accepts Booth’s aggression and tries to teach him otherwise. When Lincoln feels Booth’s gun pressed against his neck, he doesn’t shout or fight but simply says, “Dont” (114). Lincoln, who has rehearsed this moment over and over, knows the hatred and pleasure of the strangers who have “killed” him as Lincoln. He therefore recognizes Booth’s response to losing. Lincoln’s self-assuredness does not come as easily as Booth seems to believe. Lincoln struggles with the loss of his wife and living as a guest in his brother’s home. When he swore off hustling, Lincoln was trying to preserve his life. But when he starts again, he feels like he is truly living.